Posts by Lyndsay Williams

Whatever next?

A team of radio engineers on Kickstarter checked out the maths on the energy harvesting and could not see how it would work. As the company claimed "patent pending", a legal term, that can only be used if true, I searched for a patent application in US and Europe, but the application number the company supplied seemed to have only part of the patent number. I repeated asked for photo of prototype but no response. When I asked specific engineering questions such as temperature range of use of device, I was told "normal", a bit vague. There were many other red flags, such as project leader saying he had not even a Linkedin profile, due to previous identity theft. The video "demo" omitted the Bluetooth icon on the phone. They were 3 days away from collecting $545,000. I contacted Kickstarter with others, but got no response from them.

Re: The difference between Steve Mann's glasses and Googles version is ...

I worry about the social aspect of "Peeping Tom " aspect of Google Glass and other devices. It would be interesting to see the female point of view of guys wearing these devices. I did some work years ago with wearable cameras (Microsoft's SenseCam), but we always used good manners,switched off if required, and did NOT record audio as intrusive. Re Glass - Is the wearer engaged in a conversation with you or online? I did have a few hours conversation with a guy with head mounted recording specs and found it very uncomfortable. The social aspects of people wearing Bluetooth headsets and talking to themselves (or not) have been covered and parodied. A less attention seeking alternative is a glanceable display mounted around the neck, facing vertically, like a nurse's fob watches? I am testing one now.

practical

This is a practical idea but very old. Crystal radios and antennas have been shown to power a Light Emitting Diode. Some Microcontrollers now work at 0.9V or less. A computer powered by this technology has many useful applications.

spinvox

Interesting article.

re"SpinVox declined to give a figure. "It is our confidential business formula. It is literally the ratio that any competitor or company wanting to start a business in the potential multi-billion dollar marketplace that SpinVox actually created would love to know so that they could come after us. ."

Is that not like bringing a new computer to market but not telling anyone the speed, memory capacity etc , in case the competition found out?

ASUS EEE - waterproof?

My ASUS EEE just got shipped today, I can't wait to see it on Monday. A serious question, as it has no moving parts, how waterproof is it if it falls in the bath? Cellphones seem to survive after a 3 day dry out. Anyone tried it?

Broadband speed is fine

I have been with NTL then Virgin Media since around 1999, living in Cambridge. The old Surfboard S83100 modem capped at 4Mbits/second. I was paying for 20Mbits/sec. In July I phoned Virgin and asked why I was not receiving the 20Mbits/sec I was paying for. I was told the Surfboard modem was too slow and got a FREE upgrade to a new E08c007 modem. (I rent the modem from Virgin) . I now get 15.6Mbits/sec and higher.